In Memory of Marshall Tito: A Scooter Contest

May 22, 2009

To celebrate the upcoming officially recognized birthday of Josip Broz Tito I would like to offer the opportunity for one lucky trainspotter to win a fantastic Scootmoto decal. The first person to identify the model scooter displayed at 1:07 of this BBC video will win this prize. Don’t put links in your response below just the make and model and I’ll ‘fact check’. (If the feed goes dead here’s the direct link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8032132.stm )

Disclaimer: Not an official contest. Subject to Bb pulling the post and replacing it with a helmet review. But I swear I’ll send one to the first lucky winner, as soon as I get around to it. -bgk

Comments

7 Responses to “In Memory of Marshall Tito: A Scooter Contest”

VESPA-BOY on
May 22nd, 2009 8:06pm

It a appears to a one of a kind 58th Birthday gift for Tito. I found the following on the web:

“Mr. D’Ascani’s masterpiece could not have passed unnoticed in Belgrade in the late forties. Shortly after the MP6 had wheeled its small aeroplane wheels on the streets of Rome, the president of the SFRY Josip Broz Tito wanted to take a ride on a similar apparatus; it could not be that the Italian neighbours have come up with a thing so ingenious that Yugoslav engineers are not capable to rebuild it here as well!
He ordered a team of mechanics to construct a two-wheeler for him. The product was given as a birthday gift for Comrade Tito’s 58th birthday. Legend has it that he took the wheel only once and… he did not like it. That was the one and the only ride of the Yugoslav-made Vespa.”

I stand behind this contest 100% but I wonder if Brooke actually knows the answer. I sure don’t, though I have some ideas…

illnoise on
May 23rd, 2009 6:21am

Ah, Chris’ comment was in moderation and I just released it. Being of Yugoslavian descent, I’d like to think they could make a better Vespa knockoff than that, but the photo in the story confirms it! Though we’re still lacking a make and model name, if they exist…

Brooke on
May 23rd, 2009 8:50am

Good job, Chris! He gets a prize for sure. If someone else can get some sort of make or model name by the end of May they’ll get one too.

I had no idea of the history and obviously still have no idea of the actual name of the scooter. I just stumbled upon the bbc video when waiting for some cells to start glowing on my microscope.

Anyone see the movie, The Wounds?

illnoise on
May 23rd, 2009 3:58pm

NSU sold the Prima tooling to Pretis in Yugoslavia, who made the NSU Pretis Prima, but it’s not that, obviously. That’s the only Jugo-made scooter I know of, thanks to John Gerber and American Scooterist…

They were founded in 1948, so they coulda built that… It’s “??????” in Cyrillic, I think, if anyone wants to follow that path…